Wellington man charged with 20 counts of patient brokering

Tuesday

Authorities say he paid sober homes thousands of dollars to refer patients to his Royal Palm Beach drug-treatment center.

A Wellington resident who owns a substance-abuse facility in Royal Palm Beach has been charged with 20 counts of patient brokering, according to a Delray Beach police report and court documents.

Michael Anthony Cirillo, 60, was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail on Monday afternoon and released Tuesday morning after posting $60,000 bail.

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Cirillo is the owner Footsteps to Freedom Recovery Center at Royal Palm Beach and Southern boulevards. He is accused of paying thousands of dollars to three sober homes in exchange for referring patients to Footsteps for treatment, according to the report.

The three sober-home operators — two Delray Beach residents and one from Boca Raton — connected to Cirillo have each been convicted of multiple patient-brokering charges. Two have been sentenced and the third is awaiting sentencing.

The payments to Footsteps took place in 2015 and 2016, the report said.

Under Florida law, it is illegal for a lab or a health-care provider either to offer or to pay a sober home or a drug-treatment center a commission, bonus, or bribe for the referral of patients.

The urine of people who are battling drug addiction and who have health insurance is worth potentially millions of dollars to the operators of labs, sober homes and treatment centers. A Post investigation found that insurance companies often are billed up to $5,000 for a single urine drug screen. Those with addictions may be tested three or more times per week; even partial reimbursement from insurance companies can return $1,500 to $2,000 per sample.

Toni Lucca of Delray Beach owned Pura Vida Halfway House and told investigators she received $19,200 in 16 payments for referring patients to Footsteps from November 2015 to April 2016.

Lucca, 56, said Cirillo told her he had consulted with an attorney who had advised a "legal way to pay her" for passing along clients, the report said. Lucca was sentenced June 19 to nine months of house arrest and four years of probation after she was found guilty of five counts of patient brokering.

Michael Martin, 36, of Boca Raton was found guilty of 24 counts of patient brokering in June and sentenced to one year in a work camp and two years of probation. Martin, the owner of the Fresh Beginnings sober home, told investigators he was paid $400 per patient per week by Cirillo as long as the patient attended three days of treatment at Footsteps.

Checks made out to Martin's sober home from Footsteps' bank account totaled more than $14,000, according to the report.

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Cirillo allegedly also had an agreement with Patrick Norquist, who owned and operated Norquist International, to pay $3,000 for every patient that was referred to Footsteps' "partial hospitalization program." Norquist International received payments of $7,500 for a two-month period in mid-2016, the report shows.

Norquist, 33, of Delray Beach plead guilty to eight counts of patient brokering in October and will be sentenced next year, court documents show.

Norquist told investigators that he "was not asked or expected to perform any services whatsoever, other than to refer patients to Footsteps for treatment."

The arrests are part of a crackdown by the Palm Beach County Sober Home Task Force, created in 2016 by the State Attorney's Office to battle patient brokering.

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